Maybe

I've accumulated a wealth of Seb Rochford's music over the years, principally in his role as drummer with the great Polar Bear between 2004 and 2015, though also as part of Acoustic Ladyland and Sons of Kemet. All of the above are, to some extent, jazz combos, but his new project, Finding Ways, treads more of a post-rock path. The self-titled album features a rotating cast of guitarists including Verve's Simon Tong, Portishead’s Adrian Utley and Tara Cunningham, who has recently played with both Red Snapper and Modern Nature. Cunningham will be on duty when the Finding Ways tour passes my way in February and I already have a ticket for the show pinned to my digital notice board.

Finding Ways - Maybe

Friday Photo(s) #70

'...a photo, probably taken on my phone while out walking, or maybe an oldie retrieved from the family archive, perhaps even an anonymous antique snapshot plucked from what remains of my collection of such ephemera. To accompany it, a tune, ideally one that's at least partially inspired by the image...'

Long boozy evenings in packed, noisy pubs was very much my thing back in the smoking age, but these days I like nothing better than to push open the door of a near deserted hostelry just after midday, enjoy a couple of quiet pints, then head off home in time for lunch. Only yesterday, as I type these words, I wandered round to my local at a little after 12 to find just one other person in the place, a really friendly old boy in his late 70s who is always surprised when I greet him by name, as he doesn't know mine. We've chatted several times over the past few years and our conversations generally revolve around the same subject - the many former pubs that have disappeared in the 40+ years he's lived in town. He vividly recollects every establishment, the names of their respective landlords and, quite often, a number of the regular characters that propped up the bar in each one. He's quite the raconteur when he gets going. As I got my hat and scarf together, readying myself to leave, my elderly companion stood to shake my hand, wordlessly thanking me for my company. He knows my name now, but by the next time I see him it will probably have slipped away and much of our conversation will be repeated once again. He has early onset dementia, it's been obvious for some time. For now he manages his day to day life by leaving notes to himself around the house and having a structured routine, one which revolves around a quiet lunchtime pint or two in comfortable, familiar surroundings. 

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These anonymous photos of staff in an empty pub probably originate from the mid 1960s and were unearthed by me at a car-boot sale around 10 years ago. I'm grateful that the landlord of my own local is not as sour-faced as the one pictured here appears to be. I think I'd struggle to relax and enjoy my pint with him glaring across the bar at me.  

'The Man Who Loved Beer' is, on the surface, a typically lush Lambchop song (one of my favourites by the band), though on closer lyrical inspection it's an adaptation of a dark ancient Egyptian text 'The Man Who Was Tired of Life'. It originally appeared on their 1996 album 'How I Quit Smoking' and was covered by David Byrne on his 'Grown Backwards' LP in 2004.

Lambchop - The Man Who Loved Beer

Monday Long Song(s)

The rarely attempted Triple Swedeface

Between the summers of 2020 and 2021, John Dwyer (he of The Osees) together with a group of like minded friends, released five instrumental LPs crammed full of fuzzy freaky prog, skronking jazz fusion, pulsating space rock and sundry improvised weirdness. Four of those records ('Bent Arcana', 'Moon Drenched', 'Witch Egg' and 'Gong Splat') quickly became (and remain) firm favourites in my gaff (the fifth, 'Endless Garbage', is still a little too far out, even for me). 

In the Autumn of 2024, with little fuss or fanfare, Dwyer put nearly 3½ hours worth of unreleased sessions from those four LPs up on his Bandcamp page and, in early Summer 2025, the thirty three tunes were issued physically across three double albums. Such is the wealth and breadth of amazing music to go at on these records, I rate them every bit as highly than their parent releases. 

Here's a 20 minute taster of the delights on offer.

Spoiler

The Burn Pit (Take 2)

Lighthouse Keeper

Around this time last year, I optimistically expressed the hope that I'd have more of an online presence in 2025 than in 2024. Not a difficult thing you might think, but it's a prediction that hasn't aged at all well, given that my engagement in this community that I value so much subsequently dwindled to nowt but a trickle in the ensuing 12 months. I'd roughly sketched out ideas for two new series for 2025 and had planned to resurrect another old one, all to no avail. I'll try again in 2026, as and when headspace will allow. 

About a month ago I began to scribble down a few words about a selection of my favourite albums of 2025 with a view to putting up a couple of seasonal posts, though, needless to say, the old enemy on the wrist defeated me as inspiration ran dry and fatigue set in. Rather than publish what I've written so far, I'll carry it all over and repurpose it for some posts in the new year, by which time I'll hopefully be bright eyed and bushy tailed!

To close 2025, I'll look forward to one of my big hopes for 2026. Sam Grassie, very much a spiritual heir to Bert Jansch and John Renbourn, has just announced his debut solo LP, 'Where Two Hawks Fly' and released the first music from it, 'Lighthouse Keeper', a lovely song rearranged from an earlier EP.

Compliments of the season one and all and best wishes for the new year.

Monday Long Song

Some time ago, probably several years by this point, John Medd and I were having a back and forth on the subject of guitar solos in rock. The exact context of the discussion has, like so many things as dotage encroaches, slipped my mind, though John, being still a mere slip of a lad, might be able to remind me. Anyhoo, my foggy memory is just clear enough to recall that during the course of our conversation I alluded to a particular formative guitar solo to which I remained inordinately, perhaps even irrationally, fond and that I would share full details in due course. Well John, the day has finally arrived!

The one-two Alan Lancaster/Rick Parfitt segue of Backwater and Just Take Me are, for me, the most exciting nine minutes in the storied history of Status Quo. The songs opened the band's third Vertigo LP, 'Quo', in 1974 and the guitar solo in question commences at 3.07, running for just 40 seconds. If I was hearing it for the first time in the cold light of 2025, there's every chance that the fairly primitive solo would slip by virtually unnoticed, but half a century ago, as a wide eyed 15 year old, I found it, and indeed both songs, utterly thrilling. 

Status Quo - Backwater/Just Take Me

Monday Long Song

I was very sad to hear of Danny Thompson's passing a couple of weeks back, at the age of 86. Unless you've tried particularly hard to avoid him, it's difficult to imagine that you don't have something or other in your collection featuring this extraordinary double bassist, whose career goes back as far as the early 1960s. I was fortunate enough to see him play with Richard Thompson on a number of occasions, with whom he also recorded, but he's also all over records by the likes of John Martyn, Nick Drake, Talk Talk, Tim Buckley, Kate Bush, The Incredible String Band and, of course, Pentangle, amongst numerous others. His first appearance in my own record collection occurred as far back 1972, when I picked up Rod Stewart's marvellous 'Every Picture Tells a Story' LP and he popped up again in 1974 on T.Rex's 'Zinc Alloy & the Hidden Riders of Tomorrow'. These days I have any number of records featuring Danny's talents sitting of my shelves, including a couple by fellow Pentangler Bert Jansch. Chief among them is 1978's 'Avocet', an instrumental paean to a selection of  various sea and wading birds. The title track is just sublime.

Bert Jansch - Avocet

Monday Long Song

For a period during the 1970s, Sweet were second only in my pop affections to the mighty T.Rex. The band's run of Chinnichap hit singles and the string of self-written hard rock nuggets tucked away on the flipsides, were chewed over and eagerly devoured by me and my music loving pals back in the day. One old school chum and I managed to see Sweet at The Rainbow twice in their 1973 glam pomp, their final UK show with the classic line-up at Hammersmith Odeon in 1978, plus a three piece Sweet show at The Lyceum in 1981, the last concert I ever attended with that particular old mucker as life gradually drew us in separate directions. About 10 years ago, 30 years after losing contact altogether, my pal and I reconnected, thanks to the miracle of the internet. We exchange Christmas cards, birthday greetings and the occasional email, but in spite of living less than 40 miles from each other, we've yet to actually meet up again.

Had he lived beyond his tragically short 51 years, Sweet's lead singer Brian Connolly would have turned 80 yesterday.

Sweet - Healer